BARRIE CASSIDY: That's precisely what you'd want to hear from Christine Milne isn't it, that you want the country to think that you are tougher on asylum seekers than Tony Abbott?

TONY BURKE: I don't know when it was that wanting to stop people drowning at sea became a left versus right issue. I would have thought policies that are aimed at making sure that people don't risk their lives on the high seas are beyond a left and right which end of politics, who is out flanking who.

There is nothing compassionate in a policy where you see people drowned at sea. There is nothing compassionate in some people waiting in camps for more than a decade while others get self-selected by people smugglers to get here way in advance of that. I don't know when you actually look at the humanitarian nature of what we are dealing with, and what we have seen over recent years, how that can be seen on a left/right spectrum.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Where is the compassion in the new policy?

TONY BURKE: Very simply. In the first place, if it does have an impact on the number of people risking their lives on the high sea, that is a massive difference and compassion can't be limited to who is in your line of sight. The people who drown on the way here don't end up giving interviews. Don't end up with riots in detention centres but you can't ignore them. The people who remain in camps around the world aren't directly in the line of sight but they shouldn't be ignored. The people who do present, the obligation is to make sure under the convention that they get to live safely and they are in a situation where they will be free from persecution.

Papua New Guinea is a signatory to the convention, it is a democracy, the facilities that are in place at the moment are not as they need to be, in particular for children, and the commitment is to make sure that we get them up to standard so that people can be looked after, people can be cared for, people can be free from persecution but people will not get a situation where a people smuggler can guarantee that you also get to live in Australia.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You talk about the standards there, but how long will that take to get Manus Island up to standard and what do you mean by that?

TONY BURKE: Very simply, if you take the unaccompanied children, I am their legal guardian. I am in a situation where I have to substitute the level of responsibility by law that would otherwise equate to a parent. I need to make sure that if they are being sent there, the different standards demanded by the convention, and referred to by the High Court as well as in the Malaysia decision, need to be met. We need to make sure that you have appropriate accommodation, that there is appropriate services, that we have schooling available. There is a whole series of things that need to be -

BARRIE CASSIDY: How long will that take?

TONY BURKE: I don't think it will take a long period of time. We're not looking at a long period of time at all but the objective here is not for me to set arbitrary time periods. The objective here is to know that there are welfare standards that must be met. They will be met and once they are, then those different groups will find their way across to Papua New Guinea.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Capacity is such an issue here, Prime Minister O'Neill said we will take as many as we can, based on the capacities that we have.

TONY BURKE: That is right.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Is that a get out of jail card for him?

TONY BURKE: Not at all because Australia is committed in the same agreement to helping them increase capacity if that is required. If we end up with a large number of people coming, then a large capacity will be put in Papua New Guinea. It will be put to the appropriate standards but it will be - it will make sure that we don't actually have a situation of running out of capacity. People need to know - and every people smuggler would love to hear there is a cap on the number of places so they can just fill it and go back to business as usual. That is not the case.

BARRIE CASSIDY: It is not a cap, it is a question of capability, are they really able to absorb lots of people?

TONY BURKE: There is a limit to how many you would be table to put on Manus Island but the agreement is not limited to Manus Island being the only location...

BARRIE CASSIDY: They will live in the community in PNG some of them?

TONY BURKE: Ultimately, if people end up with a successful refugee claim, they needed to be provide Wood a durable solution which Papua New Guinea, as a signatory to the convention is committed to, and we, under the agreement, are committed to making sure we help fund.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What sort of life will that be, given their education problems, their problems with health, law and order. It is a fundamentally Christian country and most of these will be Muslims?

TONY BURKE: Barrie, let's make clear, the commitment under the convention is not for people to be able to move to a country with a particular average income. The commitment of the convention is for people to be safe and to be free from persecution. The Australian Government will assist Papua New Guinea in making sure those commitments can be met.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Whether or not it works I guess depends on whether it is a deterrent. You would imagine that economic refugees, for example, would be scared off. What about those people who simply want to live anywhere as long as they are free of persecution?

TONY BURKE: We have never said that we believe the announcement of this means there will be no more boats as of tomorrow. We have never said that and that is not our view. The thing that we are in control of, that we are giving an absolute commitment on is that if people arrive by boat without a visa, they won't be settled in Australia. That is the part that we can guarantee...

BARRIE CASSIDY: But you say that...

TONY BURKE: How people interact with that, I can't give a guarantee about how the behaviour of an individual people smuggler, people who want to flout the rules will always try and find new loopholes but I can give a guarantee about how we will respond to them.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You give that guarantee and Scott Morrison says he's spoken to Peter O'Neill, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, and there is no written agreement to that effect, that everybody will be settled in PNG?

TONY BURKE: The agreement is unlimited in its places. It doesn't have a cap on the number of places. The commitment that people won't be settled in Australia is a commitment of the Australian Government. If the Opposition believe that they wouldn't honour that commitment, let them say so. If Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott believes that is a commitment they wouldn't be prepared to make, let them say that.

But in all of this, there is a rush for the quick next line, the clever cute grab. You know, Scott Morrison talking about Kardashians, about wreckers and about Rudd carpet - this is a serious job, it is not a rhetorical game.

One moment we have Tony Abbott standing up saying he supports it and the next day we have Tony Abbott saying he won't outsource or contract out anything, it is our problem, refugees are no longer an international issue. For heaven's sake we're not engaging in a high school debate. There is a serious issue when which, when you get wrong, lives are lost, and they should approach it with that level of professionalism, not with a rhetorical game.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Before the last election, before the 2010 election, Julia Gillard tried to put together the East Timor solution and that fell apart, why will this be any different?

TONY BURKE: This is an arrangement, signed and agreed to by the Prime Minister of Australia and the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What is in it for him, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, why did he do this?

TONY BURKE: The Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea approached us and wanted to help with this situation. Let's not forget, Australia has been assisting Papua New Guinea in many ways for a long time. The relationship there is good and strong and deep.

People of Papua New Guinea have been seeing people drown on the high seas too. They have decided to help us with a real problem that we have. We, at the same time, are agreeing to a series of development things that have been sought by the Papua New Guinea Government from us.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What like extra police, help for the hospitals, that kind of thing?

TONY BURKE: That is right. It is all signed and it is public and in the agreement.

BARRIE CASSIDY: That will cost a lot of money?

TONY BURKE: It will. Make no mistake, make no mistake here, if this has a measurable impact on the number of people arriving by boat, this ends up saving money. There are better reasons for doing this than the fiscal reasons. The humanitarian reason of itself and preventing the loss of life at sea is reason enough. But if you want to look at it from a fiscal perspective, if this has the impact that people smugglers themselves are saying they think it will have, then the impact on the budget is a positive one not a negative one.

BARRIE CASSIDY: For how long will Australia pay the welfare benefits to those who seek asylum?

TONY BURKE: Settlement services are provided in Australia in a similar way when we have people settled under our humanitarian program. Settlement services are there to get people started, to get them on their way. The details of exactly what is provided for settlement will depend on the case load. It will depend on the individual needs of those people. It will depend on the parts of Papua New Guinea in which they are settled.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Scott Morrison raised this question of Kevin Rudd in the package we saw earlier. He said could this go on forever, at what point do the welfare payments stop?

TONY BURKE: I tell you what must not go on forever and that is the situation of people drowning at sea. What must not go on forever is a situation where a significant chunk of a good humanitarian program that Australia runs where we want to be able to help the most needy people in the world, has the applicants chosen by people smugglers rather than by Australia working with the United Nations and if we do have that impact, one of the things that hasn't received a lot of publicity, is we also get the opportunity to then consider the recommendations of the Houston committee, where you actually get to increase from - we have already gone from 13,000 to 20,000 places, but to consider increasing steadily to make it to the 27,000 figure that has been recommended there. If this works, a lot more people get help.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Before you got to that point, would they have to stop to a trickle?

TONY BURKE: There is two things that we have to work on. The first thing is the extent to which you want it to stop. I want to have a situation where we have no-one drowning at sea. Of course I want that. The second thing that we want is to make sure that we use what we're putting on the table there as a way of helping other countries to do the same. That is why it is also being linked to the conference that the Prime Minister's called for to get better cooperation of helping people be resettled. At the moment, Canada, the US and ourselves do a lot in terms of resettlement. By putting our willingness to go further on the table that also hopefully will help other countries to do the same.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Go further, if you get a significant reduction in boats?

TONY BURKE: That is right.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Just on Nauru, is that a viable detention centre any longer given the nature of the damage there?

TONY BURKE: Reports after an incident like this can often change in their detail over the first few days. In terms of the specifics of everything, I have asked for my department to provide the same briefings that I am receiving to the media. But I will wait until I get my final reports on this before I am able to provide anything specifically. Certainly, it is not the first time under any Government that there has been different forms of uprisings within detention, within a detention environment. Let's have a look at what's been involved but we remain committed to our engagement and our arrangements with Nauru.

BARRIE CASSIDY: It is a small place, can the gaols cope with another 125 prisoners?

TONY BURKE: I don't think there is any doubt about the resolution from the Government of Nauru that they will follow through with the full force of their criminal law when criminal actions have taken place. The fact that people are in detention environment it doesn't exempt them from the criminal law of the country that they are in. But also in terms of ultimate visas, can I make clear that there are two separate visa questions for anyone involved in activity like that. The first question is whether or not they have a well-founded fear of persecution under the convention. But the second question is the character test. No-one should underestimate the legal power that I have as Australia's Immigration Minister and that immigration ministers have around the world to refuse or cancel visas on character grounds.

BARRIE CASSIDY: It doesn't sound good for any of them if that is the test because most of them were involved in the riot?

TONY BURKE: I am not going to prejudge individual cases but people can imagine how issues like that can reflect on character.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You spent a lot of time with Kevin Rudd in the last week and you have said some harsh things about each other in the past. How did that relationship go?

TONY BURKE: I have to readily concede, I have been genuinely surprised at how professionally we have worked together and I think the impact of what we have been able to announce, what we have been able to work through and the detail of the policy that is around that - in particular making sure that we had the right way of handling a policy that would both look after the welfare of children without creating an incentive for children to get on boats, I think speaks for the fact that the professional relationship is very strong.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Some other ministers walked, rather than worked with him. Should they have done what you did and hung in there and see whether he had changed?

TONY BURKE: I offered to walk, as you know. I handed the resignation in. The Prime Minister rang me and asked me to stay on, talked me through. Also talked to me about the job he wanted me to do which obviously is not a job that people go looking for. It is a serious job and the way that we are working together, I have to say is respectful of the seriousness of the job in front of us.

BARRIE CASSIDY: At the time you didn't think he was handing you deliberately a poisoned challis?

TONY BURKE: We had that conversation, we had that conversation.

BARRIE CASSIDY: It occurred to you?

TONY BURKE: It did and it was reported everywhere that might be the case but I don't think in politics you can walk away from a job because it is a difficult one.